Thanks for the Birthday Wishes!
Oops, a day late, happy birthday! :sohappy:
Yesterday - 3 miles in 30 minutes flat.
A little vent here...on Wednesday I signed up for a St. Patty's day 5K. I was a little nervous signing up for this particular race as it was its "1st annual" but it was only about a 15-minute drive from my house and a 5K fit in well with my current half marathon plan. Also, my 5K PR is from 2009 (30:23) and I was hoping to break it...a small part of me was really hoping to go under 30 minutes.
Packet pick-up was supposed to be Thursday and Friday from 5-7:30 at the pub sponsoring the race. We got emails Thursday during the day that Thursday packet pick-up was canceled because the race shirts hadn't come in yet...no big deal.
On Friday I arrived for packet pick-up at 5:10ish. The guy with the bibs/chips didn't get there until 5:30...I was parked at a meter and was hungry for dinner, so this was annoying, but not a big deal. He still didn't have the shirts that came with registration (he blamed shipping of the new iPad for this) and didn't have safety pins for the bibs. Again, no big deal, but I thought it was odd for a race organizer to forget safety pins. :shrug: When I got home I realized that we've never been given any information about where to park and couldn't find any suggestions on the race website, which stressed me out a bit.
On Saturday I arrived at the race site (found a parking spot with no problems, thankfully - it was literally the last usable one in the lot). They had safety pins, but still no shirts, so I had to give my size and phone number to someone to get it later. After what had happened so far I expected the start to be delayed...sure enough it was announced that the race would start at 8:15, not 8, due to a large number of race-day registrants.
The race started at 8:20ish, and at some point I realized that I had no idea where the official starting line was...I never saw a chip mat, even though we'd all been given chips for our shoes at packet pick-up. I hit start on my Garmin as I passed who I assumed was the race organizer (he had a megaphone and had announced the start) and settled into about a 9-10 minute per mile pace somewhere near the middle/back of the pack.
We all chugged along and the first mile marker came up much quicker than I expected. A volunteer yelled out that my time was 8:15 or something...whatever it was, there was no way that it was right. I'm faster than I used to be, but not that fast! :lol: I looked at my watch and I believe it had me at 0.88 miles or something...:shrug: I don't know what happened, but my distance was wrong the entire way. By the time I crossed the finish line, I had an amazing time of 27:30...but my Garmin indicated that I'd only run 2.88 miles.
Again, I'm not sure what happened. I was following everyone else on the course, so it's not like I took my own secret shortcut. :shrug: The course had been available on mapmyrun and it was measured as 3.11 miles there, but I guess I can't be sure if it was changed at the last minute, and I'm pretty bad at remembering specific streets races were run on.
At any rate, when I rounded the last corner of the course and realized that the finish line was maybe 100 feet away and I wasn't even at 2.9 miles, I felt SO deflated. I probably could've beat my goal of coming in under 30 minutes. Oh well, I guess it wasn't meant to be. I might try to go for it again in the fall.
I keep going back to the race webpage to see if anyone else had the distance issue I had...I know people were wearing Garmins, but I didn't hear anyone talk about the possible course issues when the race was over. :shrug:
It was just a really weird experience...I expected there to be some kinks to work out as it was the first time they did this race, but not that many. They did have a great spread of post-race snacks though - including rice krispie treats! :slurp:
So that's all...thanks for letting me vent! :wave: Have a great week everyone!